I'm back sharing South Beach Diet friendly Thanksgiving recipes, after an unexpected day off from the internet yesterday when a bad winter storm knocked out power to my house for about 18 hours. I stayed at my sister Sandee's house last night (thanks Sandee!) and luckily I had an iPhone so I didn't feel completely cut off from the world. I was sad that I had to wait a day to share this great recipe for Low-Sugar Spiced Pumpkin Mini-Cheesecakes, because I worked hard testing several different versions before I got one that I loved, and I'm guessing people who are at least aiming for portion control on Thanksgiving will like this idea of pumpkin cheesecake in a single-serving version.

In the crazy world of food blogging, if you want to be able to offer readers a new idea for leftover Thanksgiving turkey, you have to cook a turkey, try the recipe, and post it before Thanksgiving so it will be there after turkey day when people are searching for recipes. I'm not complaining; it's actually kind of fun to stretch out the Thanksgiving food a bit longer. This year I cooked a turkey breast in the crockpot to get leftover turkey and then I had turkey with gravy and Whole Wheat Stuffing Muffins with my dad for lunch one day.

There's just a little over a week until you have to settle on the side dishes you're cooking for Thanksgiving dinner, and to make it even harder to decide, here's another option I'm adding to our list of South Beach Diet friendly Thanksgiving recipes. I tested several versions of this Baked Artichoke Hearts Au Gratin on my favorite contractors who are working on the new shed, and they agreed that this version was the one that's a keeper. I used a combination of Parmesan and Pecorino-Romano cheese, but even if you only had Parmesan, I'm sure this would be delicious.

We're still mainly focusing on South Beach Diet Friendly Thanksgiving recipes around here, and this recipe for whole wheat stuffing "muffins" took me three tries to get it right, so my house has been smelling like Thanksgiving for days. The final keeper version has a little Parmesan cheese added to the mixture for flavor and to help the "muffins" hold together. Of course, these aren't really muffins, but I love the idea of baking the stuffing in muffin cups so all the edges are nice and crispy. It also helps with portion control, which may or may not be something you care about for Thanksgiving! I did use 100% whole wheat bread and reduced-fat sausage to make the stuffing from scratch, something that makes these stuffing muffins a very flavorful and more healthful option.

Here's another low-glycemic option for a Thanksgiving side dish, and these sweet potato cups with sour cream, Chipotle, and lime are another example of how I prefer sweet potatoes (sometimes called yams) with savory flavors rather than the traditional "candied" sweet potatoes that some people make for Thanksgiving. It's important to find straight-sided sweet potatoes for this twice-baked sweet potato recipe, where the cups are made of pieces of sweet potato standing on end. The recipe may seem a little labor intensive if you're preparing a big Thanksgiving dinner, but you can make this earlier in the day and do the final baking part right before you serve them. Using a ziploc bag (or a real pastry bag) to squeeze the filling into the sweet potato cups also makes it quick and easy, and makes the cups look pretty.